READY TO RESPOND

The events at the house on Northwest First Avenue last week seemed very frightening and very real.

Danny Vargas burst into the house and held the resident hostage after robbing a nearby 7-Eleven convenience store at gunpoint. His accomplice escaped in the getaway car.

As Sgt. John Smith approached the house, Vargas fired a shot, striking Smith in the chest. Within minutes, 15 men dressed in black combat fatigues and bullet-proof vests swarmed the house with their guns drawn. Rescue workers rushed Smith to the hospital.

Two officers rigged a telephone line and tried to coax Vargas to surrender. But when negotiations fell through, the officers kicked in the front door and threw a hand grenade inside.

They found Vargas, an off-duty police officer, lying face down in a rear bedroom - with a gun near his hand - after the grenade knocked him to the floor. He had shot and killed his hostage.

The action-packed scenario was only an act. This mock drill was one of a few live training opportunities for the city's Special Response Team held last week.

The owner of the house had plans to raze it, so he offered it to the officers for training purposes.

"It was just going to be too much to fix it up," resident Stormet C. "Stormi" Norem said. "I know occasionally they get to do a little practice, so I told them to have it."

The officers said they relish the opportunity to do live training in the house, considering there are not many condemned homes to use for training.

"These training opportunities are few and far between," said Lt. Steven Graham, who commands the unit. "It gives us the chance to knock down some windows and knock in some doors and sharpen our skills."

But the lack of live training will not jeopardize their effectiveness in an emergency, they said.

Training normally consists of two eight-hour sessions held monthly. Most of the time is spent practicing scenarios such as rescuing injured victims, and practicing hand signals that they would use to communicate with each other. Team members also spend a considerable time training on the shooting range.

Special Response Team members are expected to be in better physical condition than other police officers.

For more than a decade, the department had a Special Weapons and Tactics team, but it was disbanded about three years ago. A year later, three officers got together and revived the team, renaming it the Special Response Team.

Today, the team is one man short of its full 16 members.

Each member is assigned a beeper, and is on call 24 hours daily.

"If you're in beeper range and you get a beep, you're expected to show up," said Sgt. John Smith, one of the officers who revived the team.

Being a member of the SRT team is a voluntary collateral duty.

"A lot of people if they're on call and you give them a beeper to carry, you have to pay them overtime," Smith said. "With these guys, that's not the case."

Police said the city needs a Special Response Team for a variety of reasons. It provides the department with immediate response instead of calling on the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office SWAT team, Boynton Sgt. Kevin McGowan said.

At least three other police departments in the county have highly trained specialized officers on their forces. Delray Beach has a SWAT team, Boca Raton has a Special Response Team and Lake Worth has a Tactical Patrol Force.

It costs taxpayers $615 per man for equipment and $7,000 for ammunitions annually to operate the team.

The team would be called in to serve search warrants when there is a threat of danger, to quell a riot and for crowd control.